


The Physician of Miracles and Death

by Minutia_R



Category: Der Gevatter Tod | Godfather Death (Fairy Tale), Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:44:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/pseuds/Minutia_R
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The new kid nearly quivered with keenness.  His voice had been scrubbed as clean of any trace of an accent as his face had been of dirt.</i>
</p>
<p>  <i>Susan felt the name should have meant something to her, but she couldn’t think what.  “Bill,” she ventured, “is that short for Wilhelm?”</i></p>
<p>
  <i>“No, Miss.  I’m named for my godfather.”</i>
</p>
<p>Death meets a poor woodcutter who's looking for a just man to be a godfather to his son.  The new kid in Susan's class says he's going to be a great physician.</p>
<p>The Death of Rats is just trying to do his job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Physician of Miracles and Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StringedVictory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StringedVictory/gifts).



> Thank you to my heroic betas, seiya234 and constantine, who looked this over on extremely short notice.

In a garden, a little girl was swinging on a swing her grandfather had built her. He and her parents were at the other end of the garden, sitting in the horribly uncomfortable sort of wrought-iron chairs that people thought belonged in gardens. It was no wonder that they were all grumpy.

But Susan’s father was always grumpy when they visited her grandfather. He was speaking quietly; he thought she couldn’t hear. He didn’t like the swing her grandfather had made, but it wasn’t about the swing, really.

Susan liked the swing. None of the swings at home took you through a tree. There was part of the the tree missing where the swing went through, but you could still still see it if you looked. Sometimes Susan closed her eyes when it looked like she was about to slam face-first into solid, knobbly, half-there bark, but when she was feeling brave she kept her eyes open and counted the rings as she whooshed past; wide rings for a wet year, narrow rings for a dry one, just like a real tree.

It wasn’t a real tree. Susan could see that, the same way she could see that the smile fixed on her mother’s face wasn’t a real smile. Susan saw too much, and could do nothing about it. It ran in the family.

#

Death stalked the forests of Uberwald.

Well, not really stalked. Stalked is a word for predators, for things that hunt and chase and kill1. It would be more accurate to say that Death walked through the forests of Uberwald. His horse, Binky, walked behind him, limping a bit and occasionally nosing him in the back of the sinister black robe. Binky had thrown a shoe, and the nearest smith that Death would trust to shoe him was in Lancre. Since Death was an anthropomorphic personification, he obviously didn't find the situation embarrassing, but it was nevertheless the case that, if anyone had asked him why he was walking, he probably would have mumbled something about WANTING TO STRETCH MY LEGS.

As luck would have it, there was a man coming the other way on the path; a big burly man with gray in his beard and with a baby--who was engaged in pulling out whatever hair he had left--strapped to his back. And as luck would have it, his eyes didn't slide over Death as if he were a particularly boring tree. He bowed and said, "Good morning, sir."

Death wasn't human, but he had associated with humans for long enough to be immediately suspicious of chance encounters in the woods, especially with polite men who had hatchets hanging from their belts and in general gave every appearance of being poor woodcutters. NOW LOOK HERE, said Death, IF YOU'RE THINKING OF LEAVING THAT BABY, I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW THERE HASN'T BEEN A GINGERBREAD COTTAGE IN THESE PARTS SINCE--

"Oh, no, sir," said the poor woodcutter. "I'm only looking for a godfather for him."

I SEE. Death wasn't entirely convinced, but he'd been in a position to witness any number of odd parenting theories being enacted. THIS WOULDN'T HAPPEN TO BE YOUR FIRST CHILD, WOULD IT?

"Thirteenth," said the woodcutter, with what was probably meant to be a grin. "I'm rather--running out of best mates who're willing to provide gifts to help the child get on in life, if you see what I mean."

HAVE YOU CONSIDERED A FAIRY GODMOTHER? THEY'RE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR WORK, I HEAR.

"And what would my lad do with a lovely singing voice and a tendency towards unlikely spinning-wheel malfunctions? I've got no use for that lot, always making diamonds and pearls drop from one girl's mouth and toads from another's, with no rhyme or reason I can see. I'm looking for a good, just man."

IN MY EXPERIENCE, said Death, THERE IS NO JUSTICE. BUT THERE IS . . . WELL, ME.

The woodcutter blinked. A strange expression came over his face, as though he was truly looking at Death for the first time2. Then the look passed, and he was smiling and wringing Death by the hand. "Thank you, good sir. I accept!"

ER, said Death. He had never learned to forget, but somehow he couldn't quite recall how the conversation had taken this turn. I'M NOT MUCH FOR HELPING PEOPLE ALONG IN LIFE. I USUALLY HELP THEM IN THE OTHER DIRECTION.

"I wouldn't ask you for money," said the woodcutter. "Any godchild of yours is bound to be gifted enough. But to seal the bargain, would you give the boy a name?"

Death looked at the baby, a scrawny thing with blue eyes far too big for his face and eyelashes so pale it seemed like he had none at all. He almost said Mortimer. But he didn't.

#

It's traditional when introducing a new student to a class in the middle of the year to stand him up in front of the first row of desks, right in the center. This allows the other students to size up his weak spots at their leisure, while all the new student can make out is a sea of nameless, scrutinizing eyes, and also the taste of whatever he had for breakfast at the back of his throat. The teacher will invariably mispronounce his name, and share with the rest of the class one or two fascinating tidbits about his personal and family history that he'd have paid a week's worth of pocket money to make sure no one knew.

This is considered to be good preparation for the experience of being the new kid.

When the new kid came to Miss Susan’s class, she simply pointed him to an empty seat3. His eyes were blue and his hair was pale and his face shone--the shine you only get with the sort of chemical soaps that make members of the Alchemist’s Guild back away nervously. His clothes were neat, pressed, mended and re-mended as if they’d been handed down through a whole legion of older brothers. He was wearing a tie.

However, since the Law of Narrative Causality is occasionally stronger than even very strong-minded people, Susan stumbled a bit when she got to the end of the roll call and hit “Er . . . Urssenbeck . . . Bill?”

“Present, Miss.” The new kid nearly quivered with keenness. His voice had been scrubbed as clean of any trace of an accent as his face had been of dirt. Susan felt the name should have meant something to her, but she couldn’t think what.

“Bill,” she ventured, “is that short for Wilhelm?”

“No, Miss. I’m named for my godfather.” Susan could hear the clue as it whizzed over her head. She frowned sternly at it, and went on to “Vale-of-Tears, Praise-Om-in-all-Things4.”

#

Bill found his feet in Susan’s class more easily than she’d expected. This was partly because Things had a falling-out with Carter Nutley5 and declared Bill her new boyfriend. No-one messed with Things’ boyfriend, whoever he happened to be this week.

It was also partly to do with Bill’s twelve older brothers. Susan had seen them coming out of the small Treacle Mine Road flat, one after another, on their way to the various jobs they’d found in the city. Each one was bigger than the last. It was like watching a clown car full of billy goats gruff.

But part of it had to do with Bill himself. He was, it must be admitted, small, and pale, and cheerful, and far too clean and ready to answer the questions Susan asked--correctly, to add insult to injury--for his own good. But his knowledge extended beyond the main exports of the Sto Plains and the types of geometrical solids, and into subjects of more general interest to the rest of the students in Susan’s class. One day Quentin Meredith-Barnes was saying that he’d break the little swot’s legs for him; the next day, Susan confiscated a battered copy of the latest Felicity Beedle from between the pages of Quentin’s maths workbook. He pleaded for it back, nearly in tears: if he lost it, Bill’d never let him see his poo collection.

It was also the case that the outbreaks of illness among the students that tended to occur on the eve of every major exam gained something in verisimilitude--not to mention verve--after Bill joined the class. Once, at the end of a unit on poetry, half the class was missing. In their place, a dozen frantic parents had sent around hastily scribbled notes that nevertheless painted an accurate picture of an Ephebean Weasel Pox epidemic. If the epidemic had not been confined to those of her own students who most loathed essay-writing and poetry, Susan might have been alarmed. As it was--and since she hadn’t bothered to write the exam questions anyway--she let the rest of the class spend the day making get-well cards instead.

_I am Certain that you will Recover Soon_ , Bill was writing in his painstaking handwriting and perfect honesty. He had illustrated the card with a neat little sketch of a patient with a swollen tongue and fingers, more likely to delight its recipient than the garlands of flowers some of the other students were drawing on theirs. He looked up and said, “Yes, Miss?” a moment before Susan made the decision to approach his desk.

She wasn’t surprised. It fit. Fit with what exactly, she wasn’t sure, but she’d have bet money he was remembering the future.

“This is your last one, isn’t it?” said Susan, leafing through the stack of cards on his desk. “Why don’t you sign it and put it in the post-bag. You know . . .” Twelve cards, as identical as a child’s hand could make them, precisely squared-off corners. “You’re never sick, are you, Bill?”

He signed the card with an illegible flourish and shook his head. “I can’t miss school, Miss. I have to learn. I’m going to be a great physician.”

A poor family from Uberwald, living in far too few rooms on Treacle Mine Road, saving every last penny for the youngest son’s schooling . . . “Is that what your parents say? You don’t have to--”

“No.” Bill’s voice was sharp; it was the first time she’d ever heard him interrupt someone. Pale blue eyes blazed up at her. “I will.”

Susan pursed her lips. Long experience had taught her that you couldn’t win arguments with schoolchildren, and you couldn’t win that particular argument with anyone. “Well,” she said. “Right now, would you like to feed the guinea pig?”

“Thank you, Miss,” said Bill with a grin. He went over to the cage by the window, where he was greeted by a burst of excited squeaks and scrabbling paws. He took a wilted lettuce leaf from the basket and began to tear it up and push it through the bars, looking more like a happy kid and less like a pale, intense, and uncanny young man.

Sometimes parents would ask Susan what the educational value of keeping classroom pets was, and she would talk about teaching children responsibility, respect for life, empathy.

They should have asked: Why don’t your classroom pets ever have names? The answer was: Because Susan wasn’t very good at that sort of thing.

#

The Death of Rats7 took a small hourglass out of his robe. It was small, because the Death of Rats was small, and because the lives of the creatures who came under his jurisdiction were short. This one had a bare few grains left in the top bulb, and the Death of Rats tucked the lifetimer back in his robe, took his scythe between his teeth, and ran.

He ran across wooden floorboards where the scent of chalk dust hung in the air, and swerved to avoid a pair of familiar, and very sensible, shoes. If he stopped to say hello to the owner of the shoes when she was doing her human things there would be glares, and possibly shouts and things thrown. Under other circumstances it might be fun, but now he was in a hurry. Duty called.

The shape of things makes a difference. Death, who was roughly human-shaped, pondered the nature of the Duty, resented it, railed against it, tried in sneaky and subversive ways to avoid it. The Death of Rats only knew that the call of Duty sometimes sounded like that high-pitched noise you hear right before you get an electrical shock when you were hoping for a food pellet.

He dodged through a maze of human legs and chair legs, heading for the owner of the lifetimer he carried, who was right now wheeking piteously in the cage by the window. He paused by the pair of shoes nearest the cage--there was a familiar smell about them--then leapt up onto the table, shifted the scythe to a paw, and drew it back.

And felt himself lifted up, held by the back of his robe, until he was level with an enormous pair of blue eyes. The familiar smell was stronger now, enough that his whiskers would have been twitching if he had them. “You can’t,” said the young human who was holding him. “You won’t.”

The enormous eyes were bright with unspilled water. The Death of Rats knew about tears. They meant heavy things thrown, with more than usual accuracy. It occurred to him to wonder how it was that the young human was aware of him at all, and then the world began to spin.

When it stopped, he was dodging through a maze of human legs and chair legs, heading for . . . someone? In a cage? With a vague unsettling sense that he’d done this before, and recently. He paused by a familiar-smelling pair of shoes, leapt up onto the table, shifted his scythe to a paw, and drew it back.

In front of him there was a basket of lettuce. Not a guinea pig in a cage at all. The Death of Rats consulted his mental map of the room, and this was definitely where he was supposed to be. The lettuce was very green and crisp. With a mental shrug, he picked up a leaf and began nibbling. Sometimes you got an electric shock. Sometimes you got a food pellet. That was life, or existence, anyway.

#

Susan could only get to Death’s house by riding Death’s horse, an animal to whom the barriers of space and reality meant nothing. At least, that was what she told herself. She usually preferred it to admitting that she knew the way perfectly well on her own, but now she was too angry to care.

She’d seen the Death of Rats come into her classroom from the corner of her eye, and had sighed inwardly and adjusted her plans for the evening to include a stop at the pet shop on Pelicool Steps to pick up a new occupant for the cage. Then the Death of Rats had tottered out again, holding a half-eaten lettuce leaf and looking as dazed as a skeletal rodent could. The guinea pig’s cage had been moved from its usual spot on the table and replaced with the basket of lettuce, the guinea pig itself was alive and dashing about making happy noises rather than moping in the corner of its cage like it had been for the past few days, and Bill Urssenbeck was standing nearby, flushed with triumph.

_He_ had been at it again. Susan knew the signs by now. Her grandfather, meddling in the fates of mortals, trying to be something he wasn’t, getting her involved just when she thought she’d made herself a comfortable, mostly human, mostly ordinary life-- Except he hadn’t this time, had he? Hadn’t involved her at all, not even in the sense of forbidding her from getting involved. He’d left her out of it altogether. Well, that was even worse. If he was going to do things like this, he ought to at least consult the human in the family. And Albert didn’t count8.

As soon as the closing bell rang, Susan gathered up her things and stormed out of the school, moving in a direction she preferred not to admit existed. She was too angry to notice that outside the door waiting for Bill was neither his father nor his mother nor any of his twelve brothers, but a handsome pale horse, more real than the cobbles he stood on.

#

Susan found Death in his room of lifetimers. Bill had arrived before her, and stood in earnest conversation with Death; as Susan came closer, she began to make out words.

I TOLD YOUR FATHER THAT I WASN’T WELL-EQUIPPED TO HELP YOU ALONG IN LIFE. I DON’T LIE.

Bill held a lifetimer in his hands, and looked smaller beside it. It was his own. Most of the sand had already run out; left in the top bulb was . . . months? Years? Not many years, if so. “But you agreed to be my godfather anyway. You gave me a gift.” Bill looked from his life into the face of Death. “I can see things. I can change things.”

THAT ISN’T A GIFT YOU GOT FROM ME, said Death. I CANNOT CHANGE ANYTHING.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Bill, replacing the lifetimer gently on its shelf. “I’m going to be a great physician.”

YOU SHOULD BE CAREFUL WHEN YOU SPEAK LIKE THAT. THERE MAY BE THINGS LISTENING.

“I will,” said Bill.

Death gave a bony shrug. WELL. PERHAPS YOU WILL. He looked up, acknowledging Susan at last. EXCUSE ME, BILL. MY GRANDDAUGHTER HAS COME FOR A VISIT.

“Your granddaughter?” Bill looked up too. “Miss! My godfather is your grandfather? Does that make you . . .” he paused, puzzling it out. “My godniece?”

“I should hope not,” said Susan. “I don’t believe there’s any such thing.”

“Oh, Miss--about the guinea pig--”

“That was a nasty trick you played on the Death of Rats, and he hardly deserved it. He’s a very nice--a very conscientious--he grows on you,” Susan said. “You can’t cheat him forever.”

“I know,” said Bill quietly. Susan’s teacher-sense didn’t detect any particular remorse in the admission, but it would do.

“When I was . . . a little younger than you, my grandfather made me a swing.” Susan turned to Death. “Is it still there?”

I HAVEN’T CHANGED A THING, he said.

“Would you like to try it?” Susan asked Bill.

“I think . . . I’m too old for swings, Miss?”

His tone was uncertain, asking to be contradicted. Susan smiled. “This swing is different.”

#

Susan and Death sat in the horribly uncomfortable sort of wrought-iron chairs that people thought belonged in gardens. Instead of the usual curlicues the iron had been twisted into the shape of skulls, a fact which had escaped Susan’s notice when she was six and skulls seemed like an unremarkable shape for anything. Albert had brought them tea. He had also given Susan a scowl to signify that he knew exactly whom to blame for the Master’s latest ill-advised flight of whimsy, and Susan had returned him the same cool nod she would have given if she really had been responsible.

“How could you lie to Bill like that?” Susan hissed over her steaming teacup.

I DON’T LIE, said Death.

“You told him he might become a great physician! He’s not going to live to see thirteen!”

AFTER ALL YOU HAVE SEEN IN YOUR LIFE, said Death, I WOULD EXPECT YOU NOT TO USE SIMPLE DECLARATIVE SENTENCES LIKE THAT. YOU DON’T KNOW HOW HIS STORY WILL END.

“It ends with you,” said Susan. “All stories do.”

THAT IS ONLY WHO. IT ISN’T HOW, OR WHY, OR . . . WHEN.

Susan sipped at her tea. There was a layer of oily scum on top, as if Albert had perhaps tried to fry it. “So.”

SO. Death lifted his own cup to his teeth. Susan had always pointedly refrained from wondering how her grandfather drank tea. Presumably the same way that the Death of Rats ate lettuce. HOW IS YOUR YOUNG MAN?

“Lobsang? He’s fine. Or he will have been next Tuesday.”

AND WHEN CAN I EXPECT GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN? I’M NOT GETTING ANY YOUNGER, YOU KNOW.

Susan might have pointed out that he wasn’t getting any older either. She looked over her shoulder at Bill, swinging through the tree, and she couldn’t be sure how much he had heard.

Susan’s parents had known how much time they had, and had chosen to live out their natural lives and die. Albert had known how much he had, hoarded it down to the second, and had chosen to stay here, in a place without time, rather than go on to wherever it was people went. And now Bill knew how much he had. Susan didn’t know what he would do with that knowledge. But she herself . . .

Had all the Time in the world, in one sense. In the other, she had never looked, while she’d had the chance. And Death had never offered to show her. Maybe he’d known all along that she didn’t want to know. She looked back to him and shook her head. “None of us is9,” she said.

* * *

1. Death never killed anyone; he just happened to be there when they died. ↩

2. But not for the last time, which made the woodcutter fairly unusual. ↩

3. Which was, admittedly, in the front row. That was why it was empty. ↩

4. This was shortened under most circumstances to Things. Things was a girl with long dark eyelashes and a mean right hook. ↩

5. Involving a geography assignment flushed down the privy, fifteen dead spiders, and a blackboard eraser war of epic proportions. Breaking up is hard to do, especially when you haven’t yet worked out what you want a boyfriend for6. ↩

6. To be fair, Susan was an adult with a job and a mutually satisfactory arrangement with a nice young anthropormorphic personification, and she wasn’t 100% clear on the subject either. ↩

7. And other, similar creatures, such as mice, voles and hamsters. You can insert your own joke about personal-injury lawyers or ex-wives’ new husbands here. He’s heard them all. ↩

8. It wasn’t that Albert didn’t count as family. It was only that he’d spent so long in Death’s realm that Susan didn’t think he quite counted as human anymore. ↩

9. Susan was a Teacher, and spoke fluent Pedantic; if you asked her, "Susan, is that you?" she would answer, "It is I."↩

**Author's Note:**

> If you're familiar with Discworld but haven't read Godfather Death, you can read it [here](http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm044.html).
> 
> If you're familiar with Godfather Death but haven't read the Discworld books . . . you've got a lot of reading ahead of you.
> 
> The title of the story and the name Urssenbeck come from other versions of the Godfather Death story.
> 
> The question of how rats find their way through mazes has been of interest to psychologists since there was psychology.


End file.
